08.01.08
What Are You Prepared To Do?
My godson’s daughter, Amani, recently told her parents: “It’s not the world that isn’t always fair; it’s the grownups.”
Indeed.
We have all encountered situations in which grownups have taken the fun out of a relationship, a class, a job, a vacation. Surely, you can recount a time when a grownup’s interference in a spat between children led to an ongoing feud between parents.
So now that you know that grownups can make your life difficult, what are you prepared to do to set things right?
You can’t make your boss love you or snatch that promotion you should have gotten from someone you believe less qualified to have it. If you’ve been downsized, bought out, laid off or fired, you can’t get a do-over. But you can take stock of where you are and make sure you don’t put yourself in that position ever again.
All of us aren’t meant to be the boss. We don’t supervise others well or simply don’t want the responsibility, but you can be the boss of Y.O.U., Inc. Once you know what you really want to do and what you’re willing to do to make that happen, you’ll find you can get really smart, really fast.
A.S. Neill, who ran a school called “Summerhill” and wrote a book about it, said that when someone really wants to do something, he can make up for all the stuff he didn’t learn about the subject when everyone else was learning. At Summerhill, students who were behind in math and science were able to catch up years of work in a matter of months once they became engaged with a subject, a skill, a profession and wanted to learn everything they could about it so that they could master it.
You can do the same thing. Of course, there are some things that won’t happen. A 40-year-old woman who takes up ballet may never dance with the American Ballet Theater, but she will be able to master a number of moves that she previously thought were impossible - just ask actress Joanne Woodward.
Reinvention isn’t just some trendy new word being tossed around by motivational speakers. It can be your reality. And it can be defined any way you wish.
So what’s holding you back?
If you want your life to change, you have to start making changes in your life.
